Price for everything, and the value for nothing

“More Than 40% of Americans Use Facebook Every Day”, “1 Out of 4 People Friend-Request Before the First Date”, and “How Can Twitter Make It Easier to Report Hate Speech?” is only a few out of dozens articles about how social media are changing the way we live our life today. All people are trying to cope up with the changes, entrepreneurs race to invent the new ‘it’ thing, and all companies has gone ape shiz trying to be the leader of the pack.  

If you take a moment to stop and think; those endless efforts, articles, tips and tricks, research insights is trying to tell you one thing: “How can we leverage our strengths, and maintain our relevancy?” isn’t it? Though it is not incorrect, but it will not sustain and it will only worn you out eventually. The way I see it, it should go beyond leveraging strengths and maintain relevancy, and start figuring out how could we build a better engagement instead.

en·gage·ment

noun \in-ˈgāj-mənt, en-\

a : the act of engaging : the state of being engaged

b : emotional involvement or commitment <seesaws between obsessive engagement and ambiguous detachment — Gary Taylor>

Notice the emotional involvement and commitment word there? Yes, engagement should not be only about what the company tells to the people, instead the company should shows it commitments and galvanize public’s emotional involvement.

Before anything else, a company should be able to listen what the people are trying to say, and be able to understand what are the longings and expectations are. Once they understood the ‘who, what, why, when, and where”, then they are understood how to connect and be relevant in creating the conversation with people. By the time a flowing conversation with the public is established, emotional involvement starting to develop, and all magic could happen (metaphorically speaking of course).  This is where you as a company could deepen the emotional involvement through encouraging participation, and together create and co-create stories that you would like to share it with others.

Take example of the brilliant Heineken’s The Candidate campaign that won 2013 Cannes Lions, Gold Lion PR award. Heineken’s understood, as world’s leading beer manufacturing company, its every guys (some girls) dream to be able to join their company. From thousands of applicants, same interview questions, and its prepared answers; how can they choose the best of them all then?  

This campaign identified understood how to be connects and be relevant to people in starting the conversation, simply creating a job interview with a twist. Then Heineken take it further from connecting with people, and deepening people’s emotional involvement through the vote for the best candidate.

You see, simplest way to do things right is by 1) Listening, 2) Understanding, 3) Participating, 4) Create and Co-creating. And always be appreciative and sincere in every step of the way, let people embrace and feel valued.

Feel free to leave comments below, and let me know what you guys think,

Tha! xx FNW 

The generation Y-bother ?

Courtesy to tumblr.com

It has been a while since my last blog post, as i have been caught up with stuffs lately, but i have been aching to ask this though; Have you ever think that the world getting much scarier than before? Thanks to the ‘social’ advancements, we got to experience the dramatic alterations to our lives before we even notice it was changed.

When I was a kid, my parents always encouraged me to play outside, socialize with other kids, and use my imagination even more. But now, how many kids these days holding their own iPad, glued to computer games and could not be bothered to look people in the eyes when they are talking? A lot. Well, maybe the world has changed, these ‘social’ advancements has bring forth a new generations, a generations that even I was scared of; the generation Y-bother.

People may call it the screenagers, the generation z, the iGeneration, but I call it the generation Y-bother. Why? Because the now generation are much more impatience than before, the digital content that available almost immediately all the time translated into the real world, making memory is something that only found in a hard drive; when you need any information, just google it.

The generation Y-bother’s brain is hyper alert to multiple streams of information; the brain might be sharp, but the depths of understanding towards wider context and attention are blunted. Not only the attention and understanding can be shallow, but these wide access to information removing the necessity for direct human interactions, breeding the generation that prefers to deal with machine than human.

You and I may be part of this generation too! Let me ask you this, how many times in a day did you check your friends activities on facebook or check out their tweets instead of talking to them directly? These networks give you the ambient awareness or intimacy in a way that you wouldn’t usually have access to, because time and space make it impossible. Not only that it reshaping the time and proximity, but it also give us the power to be able to personalized and distribute information easily creating more focus on our selves, and heighten the need to assert our individuality; making commitments seems impossible, as this generation believe that better things that suited them will always come up.

As a marketer it is crucial to understand the people, understand what is going on now in the world. Everything has changed. The instant gratification and the ambient intimacy that rapid streams of information had given, making the twenty first century generation is lack of resilience and believes that if everything goes wrong, all they should do is press a button, and they could go back to first attempt.

This is why the generation Y-bother is scary. Even I was scared of what I will become after all these changes. I think, all we have to do is just embrace it. As Andre Gide says “Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore“

Ready to embrace? What do you guys think?

Leave comments below,

'Till then,

Tha! xx

Obama's way of telling his story.

Got to say, Obama always have a great campaign team!
What a great storytelling video.


To be honest, i am sold.





tha!xx